Home / Markets / Cryptocurrency / Bitcoin appears to crash 87% in a flash on Binance’s US venue Bitcoin appears to crash 87% in a flash on Binance’s US venue Premium Volume on the exchange in that minute was 592.8 Bitcoins, which are worth just shy of $40 million at current prevailing prices. (REUTERS) 1 min read . Updated: 21 Oct 2021, 09:54 PM IST Bloomberg The price of Bitcoin appeared to rapidly — and only temporarily — plunge about 87% on Binance’s U.S. exchange Thursday morning, sinking to as low as $8,200 from around $65,000. The price did nothing like that on other venues, and on Binance the level almost immediately snapped back to where it had been. The plunge occurred at 7:34 a.m. New York time, according to Binance’s website. Volume on the exchange in that minute was 592.8 Bitcoins, which are worth just shy of $40 million at current prevailing prices. Mistakes like this happen throughout finance when, for instance, traders mess up details of their intended trades, entering the wrong price or order size. An erroneously large trade, as one example, can overwhelm an exchange’s order book, leading to a quick and massive decline. The entire U.S. stock market famously flash crashed back in May 2010, though equities have mostly avoided trouble since that era. This is the latest in a string of recent high-profile trading problems in crypto. Synthetify, a new decentralized exchange, was forced to shut down for a while earlier this month shortly after its debut because of bad data provided by the Pyth Network, a price feed backed by some of the world’s most well-known trading and exchange firms. Pyth malfunctioned another time in September, erroneously making it appear that Bitcoin had crashed 90%.
All the signs, however, were there. Like previous bubbles, people were basing their belief in the cryptocurrency on their emotions, not any intrinsic value. Then there was the FOMO element, which only compounded things. Essentially, bitcoin became an international fever. Random companies were “pivoting to blockchain” for no apparent reason other than that it seemed like a way to create buzz. But when the bubble bursts, FOMO turns into fear of losing, which makes for an especially rapid plunge.

However, while there are some organisations that accept it as currency, others shy away due to Bitcoin’s dramatic price swings. Driven largely by speculation, the price per Bitcoin rose sharply from $1,151 in January 2017, to an all-time high of $19,783 in December the same year.* It then dropped to below $7,000 by February 2018 and rallied again to around $11,000 over a matter of days, before plunging once more to trade below $4,000. Subsequently, one of the key characteristics of Bitcoin that traders should understand is its potential for extreme volatility.
The tecg titan said it wanted to create a separate, private currency system to allow users to make cross-border payments more easily.